The Rose Bush
By Philip Dodd



She sits on the edge of the bed, her hands held in her lap, examining her fingers. Her thin nightdress is dirty from the soil, the grey silk spoiled. Her fingers are scratched and cut from the thorns. Mostly minor scratches, with a couple of more serious ones from the older, stiffer thorns that were as hard as steel. She tries to use her stiff sore hands to brush the dust and mud from her knees, and from her poor scuffed and grazed shins.


There are rose petals all around her, on the bed, the floor, and under her bare feet. There is a trail of red tears from the door to the bed. Twigs and leaves have snapped and parted from the rose bush, and snagged on the carpet and the bedding. She is very still now, not quite sure where the strength came from. She lowers her head so her chin is almost on her chest and stares at her hands as she slowly rubs and wipes them across each other.
The porch light had been on when she had gone outside and launched herself at the rose bush. She had dug her fingers into the soil. She had pulled and pushed, rocked and yanked the plant from the soil. The roots didn't want to come, she'd had to prise them out, like snapping strings from a violin, they held at first then gave way to a tangled mess. The porch light had blazed around her, a solitary spotlight on her frenzied excavation.


The rose was nearly twelve years old and a good size by now. She had half carried and half dragged it into the house. The thorns tore at the carpet and the branches had held fast against the doorframe until she found the strength to drag it through to the bedroom, knocking over a standard lamp and a small table on the way through.


The bed was unmade, and had been so for several days. The mattress was exposed and the bedclothes and pillows were twisted and wrecked. As she struggled with the rose bush silent tears mixed with the droplets of blood, and with rose petals, staining her hands and arms. She strained and lifted the rose bush, holding onto it by a central stem. A large thorn bit into her thumb and tore into the skin, as the bush swiped the ceiling light from its fitting. Then she smashed the rose bush heavily onto the bed, once, twice, and three times. She collapsed into the mess of red rose petals, and glossy green leaves. She caught sight of herself in the dressing table mirror and pushed herself up into a sitting position. She looked around her at these chaotic offerings to a broken love. Not flowers, but broken parts of flowers, the bed a funeral pyre.


As she rubs the soil between her fingers she remembers how they'd both patted the soil down with their hands after the young plant had gone into the hole. She limply sinks to the bed once more. Her head on the pillow next to the rose bush's mass of roots, just as she used to lie next to him. The smell of the soil is curiously masculine, she presses her face closer and draws in the fragrance of earth and rose, and closes her eyes.


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Philip writes stories, some are fact, some are fiction. His stories can be funny, or they might be sad, and are often about memory and how we are shaped. He lives in the UK. Find him at www.domesticatedbohemian.blogspot.com and on Twitter as @PhilipDodd